People: No Place Like Home

Oilman Glenn McCarthy's little hootenanny, opening his $21 million
Shamrock hotel (TIME, March 21), turned St. Patrick's Day in Houston
into a Donnybrook. McCarthy's 2,500 guests (200 of them from Hollywood)
milled past dinner-jacketed newsboys at the entrance, stripped the
lobby's $1,000 orchid-studded trees bare, guzzled 1,200 bottles of
champagne before the banquet. Shamrocks bloomed everywhereon
ashtrays, wastebaskets, even on the panties and bras that McCarthy
presented to his women guests. (The men got cowboy boots from the hides
of prize cattle that provided the steaks.) The crowd whooped it up so...